EDLD_5358_Instuc_Design_wk_5

If I was a district educational technology director, I would be very excited to share with educators, how to design and implement an online learning course. I believe that online learning is the future of education and that, “Technology is increasingly a means for empowering students, a method for communication and socializing, and a ubiquitous, transparent part of their lives”, and because of this we need to deliver education in a format that speaks to k-12 students (The New Media Consortium). If we do not adapt and deliver education to students in a format that is their means of communication, we are missing a big opportunity to engage students and communicate with them in a way that excites them. I believe the outcome would be higher student achievement.

The first step that I would take would be to create an online course for educators on how to use the course software. I would also have a training session on “backward design” that they can apply to designing their own online course (Wiggins & McTighe).

The second step would be implementation; I would have each teacher design their course with their lesson contents. I would encourage educators to collaborate and comment on each other’s courses and help each other to become confident and proficient in creating and managing an online course.

In my current position as a Technology Help Desk Specialist at my district, I will use what I have learned in this course to create a wiki. The wiki will provide procedures and documentation for new employees and existing technology employees on how to carry out the daily tasks of the help desk. This will be provided as a supplement to training and it will decrease training time and provide up to date information. It will also provide the help desk team a means to collaborate on the fly and update materials as needed. It is hard for us as a group to collaborate in person, since we are always on the phones assisting district staff.

What I have learned in this course will allow me to integrate what I accomplish on a daily basis into an online format that will help others in my department. This course provided me with the opportunity to learn best practices for designing a course, creating a needs assessment and planning using backward design.

I developed my plan using the information that I gained from this course and followed the process. The needs assessment part was simple, there was no pre-existing documentation additionally, and people have requested training and documentation. I have started my backward design and asked, what I want people to know about how we document tickets in the ticketing system? What information do they need to know to answer the most commonly asked questions?

This will be my major summer project, creating a Technology Help Desk wiki and I am looking forward to it, especially after taking this course. I will be using a custom designed intranet product, designed by our in-house software engineers as the delivery method for my help desk documentation project.

The questions that I still have about online learning for example, what are the best web applications or programs to create online learning environments? I have some experience with using blackboard as a student, adobe products as a student, Aglix\Epic product as a student and now schoology.com as a course designer. I am excited to learn about new products as I continue on as a life-long learner.

Thanks!

Sandra Villarreal References: The New Media Consortium. The Horizon Report: 2010 K-12 Edition. Retrieved on January May, 16 2010 from http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2010-Horizon-Report-K12.pdf

Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (2000). Understanding by Design. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall